Govt’s responsibility is to provide enabling environment for business – Enelamah

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, recently spoke with select journalists in Lagos. He spoke about the achievements of the ministry under his watch amongst others. Charles Okonji was there.

What policy measures have your ministry put in place for small and medium scale enterprises (SME) financing?

It is imperative to note that through Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC’s) push and the collaboration with the National Assembly, two important laws to ease access to credit were passed last year. The World Bank funded Growth and Employment (GEM) Project is focused on supporting businesses in Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), Agro-processing, Entertainment, Tourism and Construction.

Achievements of the project include more than 89,000 Small and Medium enterprises registered on the BIG portal. Also over 900 Nigerian MSMEs have benefited from grants to implement their business plans; at least 40 local consulting firms trained to deliver technical services to MSMEs. Over 750 Nigerian MSMEs have benefited from the services of the project’s trained Business Development Services Providers (BDSPs) and over 21,000 Nigerian MSMEs have received technical assistance including training offered by Enterprise Development Centre, EDC/Lagos Business School (LBS).

The project has supported the entertainment industry by funding two online music distribution companies with a view to reducing piracy and improves the income of content developers in the Music Industry. Within the project period at least 200 SMEs will benefit from these services; 400 graduates trained in video and sound editing under support to the Entertainment Industry. 600 Nigerians were trained in various artisan skills for the construction sector to reduce the influx of foreign skilled labour taking Nigerian jobs. The project has so far catalyzed the creation of over 26,000 jobs in the five sectors under its focus.

Large amounts of GEM’s intervention that are aimed at creating jobs are not yet matured; therefore more jobs are expected to be created as this investment/intervention begins to yield results. Arrangements are being made with the World Bank for the expansion of the project.

What is government’s stand on the ease of doing business?

The foundation of good governance is the establishment of enabling environment for businesses to thrive. It is considered as the singular responsibility of the government to create the right environment for businesses and for all the stakeholders. The vision of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment when I became the Minister is for it to be seen as the Ministry of enabling environment. We are saddled with the responsibility of making Nigeria one of the most attractive places to do business in Africa, by improving the ease of doing business.

The President has shown his commitment in improving the ease of doing business in Nigeria, by establishing the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, chaired by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osibanjo. The council is in turn forming better collaboration, and coordination between ministries, departments and government agencies, and to see to more effective collaboration between the different arms and tiers of government, the Executive, the Judiciary, the National Assembly (Legislature), of the Federal, States and the Local Governments, between the private sector and the civil society.

So far, the Presidential Executive Business Council has implemented three different 60 days action national plan, to achieving specific objectives within a time frame of 60 days. This is why it is called 60 days National Action Plan.

The 60 days National Action Plan has its focus on business registration, simplification of procedures of practice, trading across borders, getting credit for SMEs, and ease of registering properties amongst other initiatives.

Also, the first initiative of this administration is to improve the ease of doing business, and focusing on creating enabling environment to make it easier in doing business in our country. That order which we have continued to implement has succeeded in removing the bottle necks that makes doing business difficult in the country.

What is your level of involvement in Public Private Collaboration?

The development model that claims that the government can do it all alone has been called outdated. This is because most government owned business do not succeed, no matter the part of the world. There has been increasing realization that partnership is needed if there is going to be development.

Even the Holy Scripture says that two are better than one, and that the three-fold cord is not easily broken. This is talking about the power of partnership. Individualism is considerably inferior to where you walk. So, we cannot succeed without partnership.

Therefore, partnership with the private sector is imperative for economic growth, and development, after-all, the real players in the economy are the private sector. It is highly impossible for the government alone to meet the need of the citizens without these collaborations and partnerships. So, development is not only government driven, but partnership with the private sector and the civil society and all the stakeholders in the economy. That is the only thing that can make any economy to move forward. So, in that context, the singular most important responsibility of government is to provide enabling environment.

At various levels and in all sectors, we have been encouraging partnerships and collaboration, including active partnerships with the private sector in some of the sectors of the Nigerian economy. For instance, as at 2017, the federal government through the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission, have attracted 51 projects through Public Private Partnerships, that when completed would contribute over N3.7trillion to the economy. Concerning industrialisation, we are leveraging on the infrastructural advantage in our continent in making Nigeria competitive in our local production, and thereby increasing the contribution of manufacturing in the share of GDP.

What is your take on the country’s state of infrastructure?

We have five critical areas that we have agreed that these partnership should look into, which include critical infrastructure that has to speed-up industrialization, we have also intervened in the area of property acquisition, we have also intervened in the area of financing, in the area of policy and in the area of trade and market access.

In addition, there are 40 initiatives of our government in partnership between the government and the private sector to improve the industrial sector. The other achievement of this administration in the area of industrialization and partnership,

How can you relate your achievement as an arm of the government?

Federal government has attracted over N3.7tn through the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), from its 51 projects through Public-Private Partnerships.

The government leveraged on comparative advantage and factor endowments in the commitment to making Nigeria competitive for local production and thereby increasing the contribution of manufacturing to the GDP.

We have stepped up the aggressive implementation of the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) by the establishment of the Nigeria Industrial Policy and Competitiveness Advisory Council (Industrial Council) – comprised of the Government and Private Sector representatives at the highest level. Implementing sectoral policies for areas in which we have comparative advantage – primarily in agriculture and petrochemicals. Examples include the National Sugar Master Plan; and the new Tomato Policy approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

Initial results include increased local production of sugar, particularly in Niger and Adamawa States by Golden Sugar and Savannah Sugar. Although some of these areas have been affected by flood, government is working hard to bring relief to the people and communities.

At what level of development are the industrial parks?

We have commenced the establishment and upgrading of some existing industrial parks to world-class parks; and we are working towards the establishment of special economic zones (SEZs) across the geo-political zones in the country.

What is government plan for the MSMEs?

Notably, Micro, Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises contribute almost half of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employ over 80 percent of the country’s labour force. It is fair to say that Nigeria cannot flourish if its MSMEs are floundering. We are therefore making sustained efforts to build capacity, increase access to finance and eliminate bottlenecks to conducting business.

Our enabling environment and ease of doing business efforts are targeting MSMEs specifically. The inauguration of the National Council on Micro Small & Medium Enterprises (NCMES) to increase our focus on MSMES and boost their development has increased access to finance by providing capital for both start-ups and expansion.

On Foreign Direct Investment, how much have you attracted?

Over $20b FDI has come into the country within one year as this administration has restored investors’ confidence. This is as result of the major infrastructural projects the government has started working on. The inflow is not just the money that physically comes into the country, but also the commitments that have come.

So, you can see that the infrastructural projects going on all over the country, you will agree with me that over N20b or more infrastructure projects with the China EXIM Bank, which are ongoing as its implementation is around railways and related infrastructure. The government has also committed over $2b to the General Electric in the past one year.

What role is your ministry doing about diversifying the economy?

Looking back, you will see that the Nigerian economy had started diversification process to a certain extent. Noticing that over 90 percent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings is from oil, we had the need to intensify diversification. With this we want to clearly diversify our sources of foreign earnings, so it is imperative to introduce a number of things. We need to empower women and youths and able-bodied jobless people in our country to be engaged in productive agriculture that is profitable, so that they can pay taxes, they can export and do the things that people do, as opposed to just producing hand-to-mouth to eat, which is really part of GDP, but frankly doesn’t impact on the revenue in any form. This also means the government needed to be more attentive to the people.

Also, under a formal economy setting, it’s almost as if they are non-existent, they are not registered anywhere, whereas if you look at the social intervention programme of government, one of the things we tell people is that we just want to know who you are, whether you are a trader, a market woman, or an artisan. When people talk about formal economy they think in term of the cost, the entire roadblock, the red tape and all the taxes they ask you to pay with no benefits. One of the things we have to do is to make sure that it is really about the people. In order to diversify the economy away from oil, we also needed to make the other sectors like agriculture, agro-processing.